Chapter 32
Chapter
“Pass the butter, Blythe dear. Jane, don’t slouch.”
Poor Catherine Buckland, always trying to keep order among the chaos.
As Blythe passed the butter, a loose guinea pig ran zigzag across the table, leaving footprints of jam on the cloth. Lucy cried in shock, and Blythe squealed in delight. “George! You naughty boy!”
I was still reeling from the dead specimens, and anxious about Ajax—despite what I told myself about dietary mishaps or water salinity causing the other deaths. Still, it was difficult to sulk at the Buckland house.
“No guinea pigs on the table, please,” Buckland said, not looking up from his newspaper.
“Yes, Papa,” Blythe said. She scooped George into her front pocket, and Lucy and I both giggled.
I caught her eye, and she grinned, but I was hit with a wave of guilt.
Breakfast at the Bucklands’ was the only time I really had with Lucy these days. Since I’d started my work with Henry, our days overlapped very little, busy as she was with Promethean business.
I had always been able to tell Lucy the truth—even the complicated bits. But for the first time, there were secrets between us. The truth about my work with Henry, for one. The way I feared I was beginning to feel about him, for another.
I’d always planned to tell her. She was probably the only one I could tell about my strange magic, and what Henry and I were up to, reanimating all those species.
Except there’d been no time to do so. Lucy rushed off each morning and came home late at night, and when we did have a moment, all she wanted to talk about was reliqs and protests and Parliamentary bills. And the truth—unflattering and self-centered as it was—was that I resented it.
I tried to quell that ungenerous feeling when it rose. Lucy was following her own dreams. Just as I was.
And yet, I still hadn’t told her that I could resurrect the dead.
Maybe you don’t trust her, I thought, and my hand flexed.
That couldn’t be true. Could it?
“Pass me the toast, would you, E?” Lucy asked, and Elizabeth reached for it. “A guinea pig seems to have run across mine.”
Elizabeth laughed a little louder than was called for as she handed over the basket.
Little Blythe was practically writhing with boredom by now, so the governess, Tabitha, hustled her and Jane to the nursery.
I stabbed at my eggs. Was it really possible that I trusted Henry more than Lucy now?
“Ah, Mary,” Buckland said, folding the paper behind itself and tapping at the headline so I could see.
Protest for Reliq Reform Turns Violent. “That must be what the constable was going on about last night. See, here: ‘Reliquemical Guild issues statement condemning the violent intimidation of its members and patrons,’ ” he quoted, then clucked his tongue disapprovingly.
“That’s a lie,” Lucy said sharply. “It was completely peaceful.”
Buckland’s eyebrows shot up; honestly, I’d never seen them rise so high.
“And you know this because…?”
Lucy lifted her chin. “It’s my business to know. They were rallying in favor of my brother’s proposed bill,” she said, rather artfully dodging the fact that she’d snuck out of his home in the night to participate.
“Ah, yes,” Buckland said dismissively. “The reform bill.”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Edgar is proposing a reform resolution for reliq-trade. To raise the national base-rate paid to sellers.”
Buckland made a dismissive noise and flipped the page. Elizabeth and Lucy exchanged a look.
Lucy shook her head—I do not think Buckland saw—but Elizabeth ignored her and said, sweetly, “What, Papa, you don’t think the reliq rates should be raised? It has been sixty-three years since the last rate adjustment, did you know?”
Buckland looked up finally, frowning at his eldest daughter. “Sixty-three, you say?”
Elizabeth nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes. They were due to be raised in 1803, but it was deferred because of the war. Do you know how much inflation has risen since 1766? I certainly did not.”
Lucy kept her face carefully blank, but I was watching Catherine’s instead and noticed her eyes dart to Lucy.
“I had no idea you were so interested in politics, Elizabeth,” Buckland said, setting his paper down and looking closely at her.
“Well, I wasn’t much before,” Elizabeth started, then stopped at the sudden flare of Lucy’s brows. Catherine noticed that, too, I saw.
“But this is more than politics,” Elizabeth continued, “it’s a matter of human dignity.”
I realized my fork was hanging halfway to my mouth and put it down quickly.
The Bucklands weren’t exactly political, but they were wealthy.
As Henry so recently pointed out, that usually made one rather resistant to the type of reform that could disturb a balance of power currently hanging in their favor.
And now here was their dear oldest daughter, spouting reform slogans, the night after a protest. This breakfast conversation was about to get very interesting indeed.
“Hmm. And what dignity is to be found in selling one’s magic?” Buckland asked, tapping his fingers on the tablecloth. “Is not the greatest dignity to be found in honest work?”
“Yes, of course.” Elizabeth nodded eagerly.
“But if the rates were raised—if, say, a man could earn a living selling their magic—wouldn’t it only encourage more of the behavior?”
“Of course not! Papa, did you know that the most common reliq-seller is a mother? These are simply women and men who want to feed their families, and provide a life for their children. Seamstresses who have been put out of work by the steam looms. Thousands of women and men who lost their livelihoods.” Elizabeth shook her head.
Her face glowed with the conviction of a new convert.
It was almost hard to watch, like a woman skipping toward a cliff.
“No one wants to sell their magic, Papa. It is a last resort. There are simply too many poor, and too many others eager to buy the magic they have earned.”
“I see. And you believe raising the rates to be a sufficient solution to these problems?” Buckland asked pointedly.
“You do not think, for example, that the whole system should be abolished altogether? The sale of reliqs banned—surely to be driven underground, to become unregulated? You would not advocate, would you, for violent measures, and the destruction of property in your aims, would you?”
Elizabeth hesitated. Even she could recognize now the real inquiry under his words: how radical had his daughter really become, under Lucy’s influence?
Lucy herself was worrying at her lip, though I don’t think she realized it.
“I think,” Elizabeth said carefully, “that Viscount Merlton’s proposed bill is a good start.”
“Oh, is it?” Buckland did look at Lucy now, with arched brows.
Lucy lifted her chin, taking the invitation to jump in. “Yes. It is. And you can come and watch the reading and debate today, if you’d like. You all are welcome, in fact. You would be my brother’s guests.”
Buckland watched his daughter. “Perhaps I will.”
Elizabeth clapped. “Oh, yes, please, Papa, do come! And Mary, you must come as well!”
I shook my head. I had absolutely no desire to get involved with this family argument. “Oh, no thank you. I have Society business to attend to.”
Elizabeth looked confused. “But—but you’ve sold in the slicks, haven’t you? So you know it’s a terribly unfair system. Surely you want to see it changed?”
If I’d dropped my fork at that moment, I think we all would have jumped ten feet.
My cheeks burned. Both Catherine and Lucy stared anxiously. Buckland politely avoided my gaze, a furrow between his bushy brows.
I stared at the sickly golden, congealing egg on my plate rather than meet their pitying eyes.
I’m sure Catherine and Buckland already knew.
They’d seen my home. They’d watched me struggle in the years after Father’s death.
I’d been too poor, for too many years, not to have sold in the slicks.
But it just wasn’t the kind of thing you ever mentioned.
It was as if Elizabeth had casually announced that I’d once worked in a brothel.
I knew Elizabeth didn’t mean any harm by it. She was just a girl. She didn’t have enough experience of the world to realize how it would shame me to have it said aloud.
It was Lucy with whom I was truly furious. How could Lucy have told her? I had thought her flirtation with Elizabeth relatively harmless. Charming, even. But that was before she dragged my secrets into it, for Elizabeth to spill out across the breakfast table.
Catherine reached for her oldest daughter’s hand. “You have a tender heart, my dear. That is to be admired. But people choose the slicks for all sorts of reasons of their own. Perhaps we should leave it at that.”
Elizabeth pulled her hand away and turned to me. “Mary. Tell them. If—”
“This has nothing to do with me,” I said harshly.
“You needn’t be ashamed—”
“Enough, Elizabeth,” Buckland said firmly. “Go and join your sisters. I need to speak with Miss Murray alone.”
Elizabeth tried to argue.
“Now.” His tone left no room for debate, and Elizabeth hurried from the room, with a last apologetic look—to Lucy.
Buckland shook his head. “Mary. I am…” He sighed. “I am truly sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I said, my throat tight. “I know she didn’t mean anything by it.”
“It was still cruel,” Catherine said softly. “And you did not deserve that.”
I looked away.
“As for you, Miss Murray,” Buckland began, “I am afraid I must insist that you refrain from further engagement with my daughter on this topic. We have been very glad to have you in our home, and hope to keep you as our guest. But in the future—”
“No, no, of course,” Lucy said, quick to nod her agreement. “I do hope that you can forgive me. I have spoken too freely with her.”
“Your business is your own,” Catherine said, and I wondered if her husband also knew about Lucy’s evening activities, because Catherine surely did. “But Elizabeth is a girl with a bright future, still unwritten. You must leave her out of it.”